The Call Of Talent format allows us to get in touch with talents in the international scene: this time we had the pleasure of a chat with a friend who took the international route after many years of experience in telecommunications product development in Genova. His experience in TomTom is very interesting because of the innovative products he works on, but also for the Software development process Felice is driving in his role as an Agile Coach.

Who has direct experience the transition from traditional software development process to Lean and Agile knows that the change is not a walk in the park, especially in big organization. This is where Felice is supporting to drive the Berlin site of TomTom, embedding in the process continuous delivery and innovation, scaling up the number of teams in an international context.

In addition to the corporate role, Felice is speaker at international Agile conferences. The next date will be in October at Budapest at the Agila (http://agiliabudapest.com/).

Starts today the new format “Call Of Talent”, which connects us with talents far from us in the map, but close in the spirit and passion. We got in touch with Solenica thanks to our event listed in the International Year of Light website. They are a young and brilliant Italian company which is working to let the Italian talent shine in our homes, with the rays of sun.

The product’s name is Lucy it is a transparent sphere with a mirror inside. It works as simple as to place it where you know the sun shines, to aim it where you want the light to go and that’s it.

The idea is not new: bring sunlight where it does not reach with a moving mirror, which follows the sun to light always in the same spot. It is called heliostat, and can be used for lighting or for energy generation. Sure, it requires some setup… you have to program your latitude, longitude and orientation, the wanted direction of the reflected light, so that the computer can calculate the position of the sun and rotate the mirror accordingly. But all of us know there is a simpler way, since when we played to bedazzle a teacher in a boring lesson on a sunny day!

This is the innovation proposed by Diva Tommei and her team at Solenica: let Lucy do all the job. It looks up where the sun is, and once it finds it moves the mirror until the reflected light goes where we want, and then follows the sun. It requires no power supply: the small energy required by the device comes from the sun itself thanks to some photo-voltaic cells. And by the way it is also a super cool Italian design object.

Solenica owns two patents on this toy, one technological and one industrial, and they are going to production soon.

The story of the company is very interesting: Diva Tommei is from Rome, and as the majority of italians, she is used to live with the sun shining. But living in Cambridge for her PhD she realized that the sunlight cannot be given for granted, having to work in gloomy rooms also in the few sunny days of UK. So she started working on a solution to let the sun shine in, simply and for the longest time. A course at the Singularity University at NASA kicked off her decision to transform her ideas in a product, so she recruited Alessio Paoletti for the industrial design,Mattia di Stasi for the Marketing and Business Development and she started up Solenica.

Recently the company have been selected to join the Qualcomm Robotics accelerator, powered by Techstars, so Diva, Alessio and Mattia are now in San Diego (CA) working hard in the 16 weeks of the program, toward the investors day on September 10th 2015. The accelerator is focused on robotics technology and the selection was very hard: tipically only 1% of companies applying to Techstars are accepted, and we can be proud that two out of the 10 in the program are driven by Italians!

The next targets for Solenica is to get the industrial partnerships and the funding, to go to production by the beginning of 2016. In the meanwhile Lucy can be pre-ordered at an early-bird price, and according to Mattia the response id very good from all over the world.

We wish Lucy and Solenica all of the best, and we will be happy to have them soon in a TalenTour event, to let the tell their story to a wider audience and to create new connections and opportunities.

Lately there is much talk of new digital elite and how innovation is changing the art and access to works of art.

The auction houses are renewed and push on how to promote new sales; innovation influences more and more the work of the artists, especially of those at the forefront of contemporary art; creative startups design applications for smartphones and tablets, with the aim of introducing children and young people to the world of art and to museums; many companies continue to invest in complex projects on issues related to art in the field of edutainment; new crowdsourcing online platforms are dedicated to encouraging meetings betweenartists and customers.

TalenTour, which is very attentive to the innovation trends, has therefore decided to explore this new world meeting Tiziana Leopizzi, architect and journalist, expert in communication and organization of events of contemporary art in Italy and abroad, as well as publisher of art.

Tiziana is also the director and the advisor of Ellequadro Documents – Archives International Contemporary Art based in Genoa.
This reality was opened by Ramondo Leopizzi in 1978, as space dedicated to art and to design; in 1979 it was joined by the “Gallery of the Great Masters” founded by Maria Fulvia Leopizzi; in 1993 it was transformed into Ellequadro documents to highlight the importance of the in progress Archive born in the meantime.
This still collects information related to more than 155,000 artists from January 1 of the ‘900 to today: a wealth of knowledge in process ofinstitutionalization.

In 2004 Ellequadro has doubled with Tiziana Leopizzi – architect and art reporter for La Repubblica, who aims to help spread abroad, the potential of creativity existing in Italy, prerogative of the art world and the world of illuminated entrepreneurship.

Tiziana is the creator and the organizer of all projects signed by Ellequadro: ARTOUR-O an MUST in its various manifestations, MISA,Fermo Immagine, exhibitions in general – all initiatives designed with a special focus on glocalization and on communication as a ‘MUST’.

MISA is a network of talented companies in Italy.

ARTOUR – O the MUST is a master created more than 10 years ago and based in Florence every, and then in Bologna, Rome, Shanghai,Yiwu, London, Monte Carlo and Merida.
This year it will take place in Prague on October 21 to 24.

Ellequadro News – Click to open

In the coming weeks TalenTour and Ellequadro Documents will begin to work together and will communicate their initiatives on this website.
Stay tuned !!!